La Thai restaurant Uptown will close after a decade

Diana Chauvin-Gallé, chef and owner of La Thai on Prytania Street, will close her restaurant on Dec. 29.

La Thai opened in January 2008. Before that, Chauvin-Gallé and her family ran another restaurant on Metairie Road for 10 years called La Thai Cuisine.

The chef noted that she has two young children, ages 1 and 3, and wants to spend more time with them.

“My love for the restaurant and the food will always be there," Chauvin-Gallé said, "but I feel like I need to put it on the back burner.”

Chauvin-Gallé's family is credited with introducing Thai food to the New Orleans area.

Her mother, Pannee Varnishung, came to New Orleans in the 1970s. Varnishung’s first restaurant was Mai Tai on the West Bank, which is considered the first Thai restaurant in the area.

The family went on to run a half-dozen Thai restaurants, including La Thai on Prytania Street. The longest running one was Bangkok Cuisine, which operated on Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City for more than 25 years until Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

Chauvin-Gallé does not plan to be out of the restaurant business for long. She is working on a smaller, more casual restaurant dedicated to Northern Thai and Laotian street food.

“It was the food that we were eating at employee meals," she said. "I feel like New Orleans is ready for this.”

She hopes to open that new restaurant in the spring.

“I was born and raised in the business. Just a couple of months break would be amazing," she said.

Chauvin-Gallé and her husband, former WDSU weatherman Jay Gallé, own the La Thai building. Two veterans of Donald Link's restaurant group have leased the space and plan to open a new restaurant there.

Correction: The original version of this story said that La Thai operated on Metairie Road for “seven years.” It was actually in business there for 10 years.